The free-market economy has made life comfortable for many of us; it has also opened up choices that did not seem to exist before. This sounds great, but it does not explain why we are bamboozled by a frenzied world that we have created for ourselves. Our computers keep us occupied, and while we soar through cyberspace, burglar alarms and insurance papers ‘mind’ our homes. As our kids take refuge in the relative comfort of their surrogate mother, the idiot box, and electronic gadgets, it is all a new mad, mad world out there — a world of transient community, also fleeting, relationships.
Writes noted social philosopher Charles Handy in his insightful book, The Hungry Spirit, “We are confused by the consequences of capitalism, whose contribution to our well-being cannot be questioned, but which divides rich from poor, consumes so much of the energies of those who work in it, and does not, it seems, always lead to a more contented world. I know of no better economic system. Nevertheless, the new fashion of turning everything into a business, even our own lives, doesn’t seem to be the answer. A hospital, or my life, is more than just a business.”
We are confused and hungry for something other than the excitement offered by the hunt for wealth and power institutionalised by our society. Such a hunger helps us to re-examine the role of work in our lives; we discover what we were truly meant to do and to be. This is a clarion call that asks us to find purpose in the journey we take, rather than focusing on the profit motive alone.
To place the perspective in Handy’s own words:
“If we are human we must choose life, but that begs the question nicely — what is this thing called life? Life surely is the chance to make the best of ourselves. We owe it to everybody to give them that chance, even if they make a mess of it. We can detect in each of us a tendency towards good and the opposite tendency towards evil. We could argue whether these tendencies come from God, or from our genes, but perhaps, if you believe that God is the mastermind behind the universe, it comes to the same thing. The proper, or decent, self is one where the good is revealed and the evil restrained. Most of us are hungry for a self of which we can be proud. More and more people, especially the young, in the affluent societies of the West, share this hunger. Paul Ray, an American sociologist, calls these hungry people ‘Transmoderns’ and believes that they account for a quarter of all Americans. Walk into any American bookstore and marvel at the number of books whose titles include the word ‘soul,’ even in the business section.”
The onus, as Handy insists, is on us: we can all better ourselves and improve our work, while contributing our bit, or something better, towards sustaining a decent society. But, it is hardly as easy as that. To achieve a right balance in a world that has gone askew, says Handy, you have to place less significance on job titles and career success. You must not exclude your family, friends and especially the fulfilment of your need to become a complete person. You cannot allow yourself to be reduced to a worker slaving away in the corporate machinery.
Handy’s aphorism is a simple. He drives home the point with a purposeful maxim. You have to search, he says, for your own ‘white stone,’ a symbol of the higher self that represents your true destiny. It symbolises what you can become when you don’t let titles, money, and social pressures get in the way.
What about today’s world? Handy’s book was published, 25+ years ago, when no one remotely imaged the far-flung prospect of a tiny, yet devastating, monster, a virus, that would run ‘wild,’ bringing our world, also our advances, to its feet. Yet, The Hungry Spirit, with a crystal clear, amazing insight, opens up a new, contemporary vista. It highlights the fact that, we all can, through what Handy calls ‘Proper Selfishness’ search for ourselves from deep within — something that we often pursue best through our involvement with others. To be ‘Properly Selfish,’ says Handy, is to accept responsibility for making the most of oneself by ultimately finding a purpose higher than oneself. This is the essence, or practical intelligence, of Epicurean philosophy: that we best satisfy ourselves when we look beyond ourselves.
It is this triumph over ourselves that makes it possible for us to re-define individualism as ‘Proper Selfishness.’ This is primarily because individualism, which is at the heart of capitalism, has become a dogma of, and for, competitiveness. If only it was recast as a clear effort to nurture our society, there is no reason why it cannot become a place where we can all fulfil our individual desire for not only success, but also fulfilment. Put simply, it would become a strong, positively potent force.
This is a demanding proposition, all right, but not impossibility. It is an optimistic philosophy, no less, based on the belief that there is, within all of us, a voice that cries out for a better and fairer world. Such optimism, you may well believe, always falls prey to disappointment. But, then life without hope would be just as intensely dismal, more so because our potentialities would remain untested. Is there a ‘remedy,’ a useful prescription, to turning this around with good intent? Yes, there is. We ought to trust ourselves—to accept that there is a great potential for constructive action without our undulating, obvious capacity for destruction getting the better of us.
Yes, it all leads to a simple, also profound, precept. There is no better place to start the process of looking for the ‘white stone’ other than its quintessential, albeit [in]tangible, existence within us.
— First published in Financial Chronicle
